The biggest issue I see with Shadow

Classes Priest
1

The biggest issue I see with shadow is this constant clinging onto the past.

Any time Blizz does anything new with the spec, they also try to preserve the past version too so nobody loses. It results in this one step forward one step back pattern.

It feels like shadow can never truly change or do anything different because the past needs to be considered and preserved.

I think this issue is two fold:

  1. Players don’t like change
    Players naturally don’t like change, however they especially don’t like when the change is not good. Blizzard has had a pattern with shadow of introducing changes that aren’t received well, and once feedback is given, they fall silent and seem to ignore it. While I understand players and devs won’t always see eye to eye, having an open communication about the changes, the reasoning behind them, and the overall vision Blizzard sees for shadow would go a LONG way. Even saying “We don’t have a vision right now.” And opening the discussion to players to help develop a vision would go a long way

  2. Lack of trust
    Due to the above pattern, shadow players have developed a distrust of Blizzard when it comes to shadow, and in some cases an outright anger for what has been done. They don’t trust Blizzard to make good choices with the spec, or listen to feedback when it is given. I also think they don’t trust Blizzard to slow down and take the time necessary to really flesh out shadow so it could be well received. This has resulted in players wanting to cling to the past where they know shadow was ok, rather than trusting Blizzard to do something new. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

With The War Within, we’re seeing a new cosmic void theme emerge, and while I personally like it and think it could be the breath of fresh air the spec needs, I feel like it won’t truly change the spec for the better if player trust and confidence isn’t rebuilt.

I really believe shadow could be amazing, but it will take work on both sides. I think more communication would go a long way to rebuilding player trust, and confidence in Blizzard.

Communicating the big overall vision for shadow would also help give players some guardrails to consider when giving feedback. When we have no idea what shadow is supposed to be, it’s hard to give really good feedback that aims toward a central idea or vision. All we can give is “X works, Y is terrible” kind of feedback.

This lack of guardrails is how we ended up here… a shadow priest with voidform, devouring plague, dark ascension, mind flay vs mind spike, insanity, and all these other mishmash design choices.

Anyway I’m starting to rant so I’ll end it here. I want shadow to be great, I want it to be fun, streamlined, effective, a well designed with good utility and strong damage. But there’s a lack of trust in Blizzard standing in the way, and a sort of resentment emanating from players over what’s been done to shadow.

I really feel if Blizzard took the time to communicate with players what their overall vision is for shadow, and listen to feedback within the scope of that vision, not only would it help rebuild trust but it would give us players something to aim at so to speak. There wouldn’t be all this confusing clamoring of “X version shadow was best!” “No, Y shadow was best!”

3 Likes
2

Very much agree. Every player has their own vision of what a Shadow Priest is, but there are clearly very different visions unlike something such as Fire Mage for example.

And it continues to be very unclear what blizzard’s vision is. We’ve been more vampire like with the old draining effects, we got some ravens at some point, we got apparitions, then we got void and tentacles, now we’ve got StarCraft blue happening.

What’s the vision? The vision affects the design, so we continue to have bad design.

3 Likes
3

Thats a lot of words to say players aren’t aware of the specs design vision.

4

There is no vision. There’s been zero effort to establish a vision since Legion.

4 Likes
5

:joy: Probably so, but sometimes people just need to get it all out.

1 Like
6

Lol I suppose I did go on a bit of a tangent.

To be fair the frustration for me has been building since legion :sweat_smile:

1 Like
7

100 percent, there is no longer a vision.

Dragonflight showed it more so when they gave everyone snips-its of every shadow design. It’s ridiculous.

8

Shadow won’t improve until the company hires more Class designers and gives us more than 3 months to redesign classes, period.

Its not up to us to finalize this.

Its up to the company to do their job, period.

1 Like
9

Whatever path they eventually take shadow down be it tweaks or a massive overhaul, they need to be mindful of all forms of content…

Both PvE and PvP

  • Solo gameplay
  • Small group gameplay
  • Large group gameplay

They outright failed to take these factors into consideration when they redesigned Shadow in Legion and left 2/3 of content borderline unplayable as it was only viable in long form content which was really only accessible via raiding.

The fantasy argument is pointless when the reality of how it functions in multiple forms of content falls flat and implodes into itself.

It is of this reason why I believe such a massive divide and disconnect exists because prior to Legion, Shadow was “okay” in all content. Not the best, not the worse, it got by fine enough and had amazing moments time to time.

Post Legion redesign, Shadow struggled doing anything that was fast paced and short lived because you could never reach peak power as you either killed the things or the things killed you before you could ever actually feel any power coming from your actions which just felt bad no matter the situation.

This is a major lesson that needs to be recognized so as to not be repeated.

10

Shadow was pretty abysmal in short form content prior to legion too. It just never actually mattered because at most you had challenge modes which were undertuned and you just did once per expansion.

11

To be honest, I avoided the challenge modes in MoP because frankly speaking, the transmog armor set for Priest was really lackluster to me.

The challenge mode in WoD I admit I just completely missed and forget exist because I was dealing with college + Full time work during that time as I mainly just did PvP and some raiding.

So I suppose I can’t completely say with 100% confidence that shadow was “okay”.

But to me, it had the tools to deal with anything it needed. Numbers aside, it never felt like I literally could not do something, only it might not be as fast compared to other classes.

Meaning that with Mind Sear, I had the capability of dealing with as many adds instantly without issues.

With Mind Spike, I had the Burst capability as needed on demand.

Without the slow power amplification of Legion Voidform, I can be at my 100% all the time instead of struggling to reach a point that I can actually be a threat before I died.

12

I can say with some degree of confidence no prior iteration of shadow would function in mythic+

13

Care to unpackage this a bit?

You have said this before, but what is the reasoning behind this?

Is it the ability to mass apply dots?
Is it the “then” power scaling scaling for things like Mind Sear?

What is the reason why it simply cant work in M+?

Because to me, I think we have the ideas in place to add to one or the other. Meaning I see no issue taking features we have now and apply to then or features then to apply to now.

But regardless, Shadow was able to do 5 mans just “fine” vs NOT being able to do 5 mans or PvP in Legion or it struggled massively on.

14

You could throw crash and psychic link on anything and it’d be good in m+ with enough disregard for balance.

Mind Sear as a filler is capped in damage by Mind Flay, and if you don’t want to stand still channelling mind flay enormous amounts of the time in ST and have it be a major contributor to your damage (Which you don’t) then mind Sear can’t be a very effective aoe tool without having a resource cost.

15

Which I don’t have a problem with.

However, I think the primary issue with S1 of DF and its version of Mind Sear was poorly implemented because you can be punished easier for canceling Mind Sear purposely or accidently like if you have to move or get CC in any way.

This caused a major learning curve for those not familiar with Shadow and how it works.

Instead, I would rather take inspiration from how BFA enhanced Mind Sear with its Thought Harvester Azerite Trait…

  • Thought Harvester
    Mind Sear damage increased by 150%.
    Duration: 20 seconds

I think the trigger should just consume insanity from Devouring Plague and you get a buff that lasts for x duration that just flat out increases the damage of Mind Sear.

So similar to how Insanity worked in WoD and not like the charge system its current incarnation is in DF.

So something like this…

  • Thought Harvester
    Casting Devouring Plague increasing the damage of your Mind Sear by 100% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 3.

Perhaps lump in Mind Flay into that and either adjust the additional damage coefficient for each Mind Flay and Mind sear or keep it the same for both.

So something like this…

  • Thought Harvester
    Casting Devouring Plague increasing the damage of your Mind Flay by 100% and Mind Sear by 50% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 3.

    • Adjust the damage enhancement as needed
    • Adjust the duration as needed
    • Adjust the stacking buff as needed and/or adjust how it stacks… does it refresh outright? Or does it act like Guardian Druids Iron Fur so each stack has its own duration?

This would allow Mind Flay to remain the best choice for single target but also allow Mind Sear to be effective to be used to clear out a lot of targets.

Point is, I really don’t think its that difficult to bring Mind Sear back and have it both feel good to press without being overpowered all the time while also not competing against Mind Flay on single target.

16

This doesn’t fix the problem. The relevance of mind sear is still proportionally connected to the relevance of mind flay on single target.

In this situation every button that isn’t sear in AoE has an opportunity cost proportional to the number of targets you’re in combat with because it’s time spent not searing. There’s a reason every single other spec in the game has moved away rotational difference between ST and AoE rotations being builder based.

17

Are you saying that our AOE should have a strict cooldown applied to it? So you literally cannot use the spell at all until it has cooled down again? Am I understanding correctly? If not, can you provide a more specific example? Because I am unable to grasp at what your trying to explain.

18

The differences, if there are any, between an AoE rotation and an ST rotation should for the most part come from how a player chooses to spend resources, not how they choose to gain them, as resource gaining spells are proportionally significantly less relevant.

And rotations that place high levels of relevance on resource generating filler spells tend to abjectly suck in actual content.

19

So spending resources to get a temporary buff to AOE is a problem how?

I don’t see how this is a problem in the game.

If the argument is that it competes with single target then you just have different buffs for Mind Flay and Mind Sear.

If the argument is that it allows more uptime on the spell an as such it competes with the rest of your spells priority system, then just adjust the numbers so it is not ideal to use without being buffed but you can still use it for low health or quick to die enemies as you wish but for tougher enemies, you need to use more rotational spells to pump up the damage of your AOE to be effective enough to use instead of your other spells but only for a short time.

Which is why I have said multiple times… remove the resource generation on filler spells.

If Mind Flay and Mind Sear did not generate resources then its pointless to use those spells unless you got nothing else to use… which is how it should be. But in the case of the empowerment idea I suggested, you would open a small window of time where you can turn a filler into a priority spell for those situations that it may apply.

20

Worth pointing out in WoD MFI literally did buff sear, and it was still terrible with sear being tuned as highly as possible relative to flay without overtaking it on 2 targets.

There are three tried and tested ways to build functioning AoE rotations in modern WoW.

Target proportional cooldown reduction (Frost Mage)
Cleave
Spender Diversity

I’d rather have some combination of those three than go off trailblazing again and end up with something that doesn’t function in practice.

Honestly I think frost mage has the best AoE dps gameplay in the entire game. It feels fantastic.